| Complexity
and Organizational Structure by Emily F. Breuner |
|
| Abstract | |
| This thesis examines successful, innovative forms of corporate structure in order to identify key characteristics and requirements of these new forms of organizations. Once these have been identified, they may be useful in creating new or modifying existing corporate or organizational structures in order to deal with the accelerating pace of change. I have chosen to concentrate my analysis on two "innovative" organizations that have each existed for over twenty-five years, growing to unbelievable size and quietly changing the world as they did so. |  |
It is impossible to open a journal these days without being confronted with an article about the use and growth of the Internet. While it is true that the Internet is not a corporation, it nonetheless has an organizational structure that provides for coordination and decision making without central authority. The structure by which this interconnected network manages coordination between its distributed parts can provide valuable insights about how to structure a decentralized corporation or organization.
Visa International is a corporation that is wholly owned by the member institutions that issue credit cards under its name. It was purposely architected to distribute power, authority and control to the peripheral components of its structure; it was also intentionally structured to evolve and adapt as its environment changed locally or globally. I will examine the seemingly unique characteristics of Visa's industry that generated its structure, and then identify how Visa was structured to respond to these demands. |
|
|
In order to perform this analysis, I am using the concepts and tools developed as part of the Process Handbook Project directed by my thesis advisor, Thomas W. Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Information Systems, at the Center for Coordination Science at the MIT Sloan School of Management. I also apply some of the concepts of complexity theory and Karl Weick's theories on the psychology of organizing. I extrapolate general characteristics of these centralized organizations to describe the generic case of a decentralized organization, and conclude by suggesting how decentralized organizations can best be designed. I also propose that there are numerous organizational successes and failures that can be analyzed and understood via these same characteristics and requirements. This thesis concentrates on the high level corporate structure of the Internet and Visa International rather than analysis of internal procedures. |
|
|
|